


The Many Names of Maria Reynolds

by august_songs



Category: Hamilton - Miranda
Genre: Abuse, Abusive Relationships, F/M, Gen, its very very sad, my poor baby, nobody's happy maria has a lot of names, tags to come, underage marriage
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2016-05-07
Updated: 2016-05-07
Packaged: 2018-06-06 20:47:28
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, Underage
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,803
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6769342
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/august_songs/pseuds/august_songs
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Maria Lewis Reynolds Clingman-Clement Mathews was immemorialized as Maria Reynolds in Hamilton's catastrophic damn pamphlet. But before any of that, she was Mary Lewis, barely more than a child, shoved in the middle of four older siblings and one younger sister, a little too idealistic.</p><p>A story of Maria Reynolds told through her names over the years</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Many Names of Maria Reynolds

**Author's Note:**

> Notes:  
> Yes, Mary did have 5 siblings, yes, their ages are mostly correct, yes, she did marry Reynolds when she was 15 and he was... at least 21 though probably older. (We don't know when Reynolds was born isn't that horrible.)
> 
> Please let me know what you thought! I love my baby maria w all my heart!

I. Mary Lewis

Maria is born Mary, Mary Lewis, in New York City, in the downtrodden parts of it. Before it was the greatest city in the world, it was just a normal trading post, with normal families inhabiting it.

Thomas likes to make fun of her and Elizabeth for what Mamma did— had five sons with a rich man, divorced him, and remarried Pappa. Thomas thinks he’s above it all, nine years older than her and nine times smarter, graduated from a good college and now headed towards a wife and family, and ready to disown the Lewis family the moment he can.

 _It’s not their fault,_ Mary wants to say. _Five kids, one more on the way, they’re overwhelmed, and you won’t give them a penny of help._ But Thomas isn’t even around that much anyways, and Mary has managed to section off her brain into little compartments and push Thomas into one, only to be opened when he’s around.

The rest of the time, it’s just her and Sarah and Betsey. Well, that’s not quite right— it’s her and Sarah and Betsy _and_ James and Susanna, but Susanna’s practically grown and’ll probably get married soon, has been volunteering at some war hospitals lately, and James is almost college-age, coming up on thirteen years, which means he’s desperately piling more and more courses at school onto his plate in the hope of making it to one of the good ones. Mary’s barely had half a conversation with either in the past month.

Sarah is older than James, five years Mary’s senior, and once or twice a month she goes down with Susanna to help at war hospitals. But she likes family life, makes a point to sit down with James and Mary and Betsy each once a week and ask them how their day’s been, how they’re doing. She follows Susanna and their mother around the house whenever they’re home wants to be a mother more than anything else, she says to Mary one lazy Saturday halfway through washing their third load of laundry. Sarah is very good, sometimes irritatingly good.

Betsy somehow manages, despite being a late bloomer and not talking more than a handful of lisping sentences, to be obnoxious, annoying, and adorable and beloved by everyone. She follows various people around, clinging to their legs, and cries. She cries a lot, which makes everyone to compare her to Mary, which is cute at first but gets incredibly infuriating incredibly quickly.

And then there’s Mary, who’s… eleven. Yes, she’s eleven this year, and there’s a war on. She’s a great big sister and a mediocre younger sister and a very solidly forgettable daughter. The preacher says she’s a good Christian on Sundays. Boys have started to notice her, which is sort of annoying.

She’s really not that important, thank God.

 

 

The first time she meets James Reynolds, she’s a week and a half into her fourteenth year. She walks into the house, back from the marketplace with a measly quantity of bread, and she sees her father and two other men bent over the living room table, pointing to a map and talking about money. “I have the—” she starts to say, but her father stands up suddenly, straight backed.

“Ah, Mary, you’re home!” He says, unusually gentle and formal, accent clipped. Mary does _not_ smirk at his efforts to be Cultured and Educated. “Daughter, would you be so kind as to set up some refreshments for our guests?” One of them, a tall man who’s still in a military uniform, stares unabashedly at her as she goes to the kitchen to chop the bread and find some biscuits to go along with it. 

Mary drops into a curtsey as she walks back into the room, where they’ve outlined some area on a map. “Your refreshments, sirs,” she says, maybe letting her voice dip down a little low, performative. She sets them on the only corner of the table not covered by the map and nods her head softly.

“Mary, this is Mr. James Reynolds,” her father says, still in that overly cultured tone. Mary doesn’t see why— she can smell Reynolds from over here, can see he hasn’t shaved in one or two days, and he certainly doesn’t look rich. “James, this is my daughter Mary.”

James straightens his back and nods at Mary in that vaguely patronizing way adult men have. Mary pushes the corners of her mouth apart and up into a smile, grabs the sides of her skirt and drops into a curtsey. “It’s a pleasure, Mr. Reynolds,” she says, rising up quickly, not giving him the respect she would give to someone richer. 

As she walks out of the room to get Sarah and start to help her mother with dinner, she can feel Reynolds’ eyes digging into her back. Maybe she flounces a little out of the room, but she’s _fourteen,_ for goodness sakes, of course she wants to show off for the adults.

 

Her parents tell her of the plan to marry her off later, in April when rain is an ever-present force in their lives, after a short fight in which her mother threw up her hands and left the room. The conversation is short but not rushed, her father speaking in the way of his. “Mary, love, you remember James Reynolds from the other day?” Yes, she does. “He’s proposed to you,” her father said, and the words ring in her ears like they’re bells, clanging back and forth and making her want to wince.

Surprise, Mary, surprise and— happiness, look happy. “Really?” Mary says, dragging the corners of her mouth upward. “When’s the wedding?” She wont get a say in any of this, of course. He proposes, he accepts the proposal for her, he sets the date, he kisses her in the church and takes her to bed.

Mary wants a say, in the vague way children want flying ponies and soft featherbeds. Mary has never been good at telling people what she wants.

She drops into a little curtsey for her father, lets the snark she wants to say come out in the deep drop. “Thank you for letting me know.” She tries to keep the bitterness and sarcasm out of her voice, but the words are still tinged with just a hint of fury. “I’m off to bed now.” Mary jolts up out of the curtsey and walks off to bed, a little stomp in her step.

Elizabeth is waiting for her, has moved over to the right side of the bed so Mary can take the left. Mary is tired, doesn’t really want to talk, but she wants to listen to Betsy so she quickly strips off her dress and pulls on her nightgown.

“He’s a Commissary, he’s fighting in the war,” Betsy whispers to her the moment Mary climbs into their cot,  information that her mother’s already told her. Mary can hear the capital-C. Poor Betsy, probably thinks she’s doing Mary a favor, letting her know this. “Mamma says—“ oh, Mary bets Mamma says a lot of things “—he’s a good man.”

The back of her neck pricks up, and she turns to Sarah, who is stuck between trying to fall asleep and wanting to be a Good Sister and help Mary and Elizabeth. “Sarah, do you know old is he?”

“Oh, I don’t know,” Sarah says, who obviously hasn’t thought about it before. “You’ve seen him before, haven't you, last year? He’s been in the war a while, though, and he doesn’t look a day under twenty. Probably more like twenty-five.”

Mary hates crying, hates it hates it hates it. Thomas thinks it’s very funny, because she cries all the time, cries at little animals dying and pretty girls walking around and stubbing her toe. _Hypocrite,_ he said sing-song, he’s an adult now, fully grown and married to a girl the same age as Susanna. _Hy-po-crite._

She cries now, tears rushing down her face, swinging her hand over her mouth reflexively so she doesn’t wake anyone. Betsy, who’s used to these outbursts, tuts her tongue sympathetically and rubs her back, and Sarah lies awkwardly in her cot shuffling with the blanket. They stay like that for a while, with the heel of Betsy’s hand moving up and down her back, digging in near her spine, before they hear a noise.

It’s loud, a crashing, some china thing just got dropped or— or thrown. This isn’t new, Mary knows this, and she pushes herself closer to Betsy. The parents are arguing again, her mother and father. She catches a spike of sound: “—unfair to all of us—“ from her mother. Another crashing sound— Mary takes inventory, because odds are that she’ll have to clean the shattered pottery off the ground in the morning.

More speech, and now sobs, and Mary’s father is saying something softly. Calming her mother down, probably; he won, as he does.

 

In the end, it’s Thomas who tells her why she’s getting married to Reynolds, and he manages to make it crueler than all the facts alone. “You do know why they’re marrying you off, right?” he asks.

Mary doesn’t, no, and despite knowing that it’s stupid and dumb and pointless to tell him that, she does anyways.

“Because!” Thomas says gleefully, and he’s so cruel it makes her want to sob, which makes her hate herself even more. “Because, first off, they know you’re going to be a whore, and second off, they know James is the kind of man who likes whores, if you know what I mean.”’ He’s cruel. “But mostly cause mamma’s ex-husband’s cousin’s wife’s son, or something like that, he’s gonna sell father some land. And you know who’s gonna be a witness?”

Mary stands in silence, and Thomas playfully slaps her cheek. It stings. “Do you know? Do you?” he asks, and she sits down on the bed and decides to just let him say what he wants to say.

“No, Thomas, I don’t. Enlighten me,” she says.

“James Reynolds. He’s the witness. They’re selling father the land for some money and _you,_ idiot.” Mary will not cry. She will _not_ cry, absolutely not, it’s unacceptable, not in front of Thomas.

She does cry, and Thomas laughs a mean laugh. “They’re halfway broke anyhow. It’s easier with you gone. You’re a burden, see,” he says, and Mary breathes in deep and gives herself fifteen seconds to get a grip.

She rolls her eyes and nods, leaves the room despite Thomas’s protests. (She does cry again, but it’s not until it’s late at night and even Betsy is sleeping. _It’s because you know it’s true,_ the Thomas in her head says, and she rolls over and buries her face in the cot and cries some more.)


End file.
